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Well it wasn't exactly 'sunny', but the warmer air and melted snow was a real treat for Luke. It wasn't going to be great for too long--once the summer heat kicked in he was in for a rough time--but the air was comfortable and not as dry, and he was going to savor it while he could.

The mansion lawn was a real treat for him, too; he'd always liked the smell and feel of grass, and if anything his super-nose made it better, like when it rained but all the time. And while he was kind of touchy about...being touched, cool grass didn't bother him like that, for which Luke was very grateful.

While in theory Luke had come out here to read, that didn't last, like, at all. His classes were handled and he didn't have any outstanding work or upcoming events or anything, so halfway into the second chapter he found himself laying out flat near the shade of the mansion, eyes closed, tablet on his chest under his folded hands.

He was very happy. Who could blame him?

He was probably about to doze off a little, but a weird sound registered very faintly. He opened one eye and sat up slightly; it sounded vaguely word-like, but he didn't see anyone around. After a moment, he heard more word-like sounds, and this time he picked up the direction a little. He could juuuust see movement in that evergreen. Conscious of their presence, Luke wrinkled his nose and sniffed from that direction.

Both scents were familiar, but actually raised more questions for Luke. Glitch and Janelle were his age and he knew both of them pretty well. Glitch was, shockingly, easily recognizable for the slight iron tinge to her, and Janelle, also shockingly, smelled like plants. He...wasn't sure he saw them up in a tree together doing...were those water balloons?

Uh-oh. Luke was almost about to speak up or something, but just before he did he noticed someone else walking towards the now ominously-silent tree. He was pretty sure it was wrong to just watch, but he kind of felt like it was a disaster in the making, and he was the hapless bystander. Sure, let's go with that.

The oddly-familiar girl sat down at the base of the tree of Luke, and as he sat fully upright, he was almost thinking he recognized her hair color. Then the two distended balloons exploded all over her. She stood suddenly, and her shocked expression made Luke start snickering. Oh God, he was so terrible, maybe he should have said something but that was...wait she's flickering. In between chuckles through his hands he saw the shifting colors of her hair and hands, as they got brighter. Wait, wasn't that-

BANG

So like, super-hearing plus flashbang sounds didn't mix. Being blinded was bad enough as he realized too late to cover up and his vision melted, but the sonic shockwave made him lurch over onto his stomach, hands feebly grabbing around the points of his ears. Dizzy, disoriented and nauseous, Luke made a quiet whimpering noise as he tried and failed to orient himself. Instead, he just lay his face in the damp grass, hands over his head like he was being arrested.

He had to admit, though. He probably deserved that.

God damn it.

And of course what he really needed now was that snotty kid being snotty at him. Yeah, okay, his bad getting loud, but c'mon, that's his response? Urgh.

Luke paused to steady himself as he sat back up and focused his glare on the blank word document instead of the other guy. Michael was his name, or something. He was new. That was a point in his favor, sure--Luke hadn't been a pinnacle of sympathy when he first got here--but he was still frustrated and the guy was NOT helping.

Luckily, he didn't get the chance to speak up before the librarian walked over, heralded by the strong earthy scent of the guy. Mr. Pahlke was...an enigma, but in a good way! Luke liked him in the distant way you can like someone without talking to them much. So like, horror movie jokes aside, that was actually a fair source of kindred feelings. Not the 'monster' part but the 'being out-of-place and surrounded by people who you want to relate to but they're usually too put off to want to be your friend' thing. He was also so quiet and mild that Luke would feel super guilty if he upset him.

At the very least, his presence was enough to hammer into his skull that this was a public--in a manner of speaking--place and making a scene was a stupid thing to do. His expression quickly shifted in an embarrassed half-smile.

"Sorry, I had a computer glitch and, well..." Luke picked up the cracked pieces of the mouse. It was in three big pieces so maybe someone could glue it together but that person was not him. "I'll be quiet now. Sorry."

He gave an apologetic nod to Michael. Honestly he was still a little annoyed about the whole thing but at least he'd defused himself to not, like, throw something. Success? Oh, idea. He turned around and grabbed a mouse from another empty computer and swapped it into the USB port to replace the busted one. Luke was...decently confident he could try to pull back the missing file? Worth a shot.

Still, first he looked back up at Mr. Pahlke, awaiting a verdict.

Wait, huh?

Okay, that kind of threw him off. And apparently a bunch of the other people had gotten the idea that the little girl was a toll...booth? She was definitely not happy to see him, so he stood back up and stepped slightly back and to the side, folding his arms and staring absently down the hall.

On one hand, she was like, ten? Luke could outrun her. She probably didn't have much authority to block the way. But that would be a jerk move and an escalation. One person steals past, suddenly everyone else does. Stampedes were bad. Stampedes down narrow hallways in the direction of young children were triple-extra bad.

Honey instead of vinegar? She definitely had something against him, and given her age and mysterious possibly-undersea-related origins, Luke couldn't hold being unnerved against her. He was used to it, and while that didn't make it completely fine at least here it probably wasn't out of genetic-discrimination-based disgust. Still, making nice might not do much here.

Luke groaned quietly, leaning back against the wall. There were a lot of people here now. He wasn't thrilled about it, but it might be best to just wait. "Hey, what's your name? I'm Luke." He asked towards her. At the very least he could see what her deal was later. But he'd still rather have food now.

Luke was intimately familiar with the kitchen and its surrounding area. Along with normal meals with the other students and residents, his mutation was one of the ones that 'require a degree of caloric intake considerably more than the mean'. Well, that's how he would style it if he wanted it to sound fancy about it. He'd not been into sports in Maine, but he knew the wrestlers and football players ate like four-or-five thousand calories a day during the season. Like that, but without the sports part.

Anyway, Luke came down for between-meal snacks pretty often, since being hungry is, y'know, bad? Also he got irritable when he was hungry like most people but he found that it was more of a problem for him given his other ANYWAY.

He paused in the entry to the kitchen hall, momentarily confused by the crowd of people until he saw the small pink girl in the middle of the path. Wait, wasn't she the one from Atlantis or something? Luke had no idea what that was about, but he was pretty sure he'd seen her around, and she always gave him the stink eye when she noticed him looking at her. That was weird, he had no idea if he'd done something to upset her without noticing. How would he know?

As some of the people were deterred in various states of annoyance, Luke moved up to her. She was like nine years old or so, and getting a clearer view of her monochrome eyes and rocky skin made Luke feel a twinge of sympathy. For mutants who looked it, unpleasant reactions were universal; Luke was used to it, and he was pretty easygoing to begin with, so adapting had been relatively easy. Even then, he wasn't immune, and a kid like her probably had it way worse...

Anyway. Whatever she was doing, he kinda needed to pass her. "Hey, you mind if I go through?" He dropped to a knee in front of her and smiled. "I was just gonna grab a snack. Unless there's something bad in there?" If there was, he wasn't sure who asked the pre-tween to stand guard, but he assumed she wasn't just hanging out for fun. Maybe. He was a kid once, he knew kids found ways of entertaining themselves.

Okay, they were clear. Luke paused just outside the densest mass of people, as everyone ran around in all kinds of directions. He was feeling a lot more antsy now, though; tons of people pushing him made him feel really icky, even in what was probably a serious moment. As the girls caught up to him, Luke tried to steady himself, holding his restless body still and taking a deep breath.

Now to the next step. "Okay, okay, front desk is..." Luke turned, then turned again, then a third time, then saw the sign with directions to the lobby and started moving that way quickly.

"Hey, right here." The lobby had a heavy trickle of people scrambling through the doors, so Luke figured he wasn't going to get called on now with all these other things going on. He vaulted over the counter and shoved the chair out of the way, crouching in front of the setup.

It wasn't hard to get to the cameras; no password needed, just some basic point-and-click Luke could do in his sleep. He glanced up to check the clock, then started checking the different feed at the timestamp of roughly four minutes ago. After a few seconds, though, he made an abrupt growling sound and looked up. He pressed his palm against his forehead in frustration.

"There's frickin' dozens of cameras and they're not labeled or anything. I gotta go through them manually, unless either of you know what the 'room code' back there is." Not wanting to delay if he could at least brute force it, Luke went back to cycling through, trying to maintain composure so he didn't scare off the two others who were trying to help.

Luke felt a light touch on his arm and winced away reflexively, but it was just the girl. Okay, things were cool, inasmuch as they could be given the situation. Luke followed the girls quickly into the relative quiet.

Wow, his ears were ringing a little, but at least they had a moment to plan. The first girl seemed to have the right idea, though. He kind of wished he'd thought of that himself, but it was a good plan. "Yeah, I agree. If someone's attacking this way the, well, I don't know why they would but it's-"

The bang startled him momentarily, but then Luke realized that nothing had happened. Wait, where was the glowy-fairy...girl? Uh-oh. She was embracing her inner Tinker Bell, whether she wanted to or not. It was kind of funny, but it meant that this 'effect' was still ongoing. Bad sign.

"Oh, crap." Luke wasn't really sure how to offer support--sudden shrinking wasn't exactly a normal problem for him--so he just looked between her and the other girl and said, "We should stick together, maybe carry her if she can't keep up 'cause I don't wanna, well, yeah." He held up his clawed hands, then turned to face the hallway. "But uh, definitely checking out the front desk now."

Luke started making his way down the hall towards the reception office, but now there was another obstacle; the mass of people moving in all kinds of directions, bordering on a stampede, crowding through the doorways and halls.

"Ah, crap." Luke muttered. A moment's hesitation and he waded into the mass, gently but firmly the panicked humans aside to get to the door, who quickly learned to step out of his way. "C'mon!" He called back to the girls. Whatever gap he left in his wake was closing, but they could both probably fly right? The ceilings were high enough, hopefully.

Yeah, he could tell.

In fairness, Luke couldn't expect random bystanders to be responsive and proactive in this kind of chaos. He was having enough trouble himself, right? Still, without knowing what was happening to them or why, his hands were kind of tied as far as helping.

The crowd was less packed as Luke tried to move towards the young girl across the room, which was good because all the people moving against him had been playing up his nerves even more. "Are you okay?" He said as he finally maneuvered to the gray-skinned girl. "Nothing's happening to you, is it?"

Luke focused his attention on one man, who looked to have been decked out as an army ant--complete with green helmet and camouflage. He was tossing his head around in a panic, and the little legs on his abdomen were waving in the air. Disgusting, and bizarre. It had to be a costume thing, right? What the hell did that-

"Hmm?" Luke looked to the approaching girl, with fluttery wings and glowing hands. "This is me, normally." Luke looked down to the girls, who were both at least a foot shorter than him. "I already looked like this, that is. But, uh..."

Luke looked past the two. There were not a lot of human-looking people left; almost everyone in the area was no longer in an...actively-changing state. "So it is the costumes? They're, like, turning real, then?" That was definitely a bad thing. He knew how the Halloween specials went; someone dresses up as a death robot or a dinosaur and now everyone was in trouble.

Nobody seemed super-giant now, though. Good sign? Luke looked back to the other two, but before he could speak he heard a very brief, faint scraping sound from behind him.

"Ohs--" Reflexively, Luke pulled his arms up and felt a sudden stinging across his forearms as a wild-eyed man in some kind of robe flailed at him with what looked like...a katana?!

The...'samurai' reared back and slashed at him again, biting painfully into his right side. In response, Luke pulled to his left and lunged forward, slamming an open palm into the attacker's chest and sending him sliding on his back across the floor until he crashed into a stack of cardboard boxes full of comic books.

With a quiet hiss, Luke touched the second cut. Not deep, but dang it that stung. "Uhh, okay. What..." Luke trailed off, turning back to the girls. If that wasn't a random thing and other people were potentially going to start acting out, this could be a lot more bloody once non-mutants started getting stabbed.

Now what? "Any ideas?"